


Past Imperfect

by Belewitts



Series: Hard Times [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Dystopia, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belewitts/pseuds/Belewitts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The four of them lived like they were on one long damn road trip. Sharing food, and farts and beds. Logan could tell you exactly what time of night Magneto would let one off, or how tense Storm was by the tapping of her fingers. A jet is too small for privacy and when you're living on the run, you learn to make peace with people in strange ways. Logan, Magneto and Xavier share a rare, peaceful night in the dark future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Alby_Mangroves for the wonderful cover art, she made for my fandom stocking. My first cover art gift ever and I couldn't be happier. You rock Mangroves.

 

~~~

The Sentinels were coming. They were always coming now. Day and night they hovered over the globe, hunting the mutant gene. If they were alive, Logan might admire their single minded purpose, but the methodical extermination of his species just left him feeling tired. Outside the sky was roiling like the world had grown sick and was heaving up it's distress in rain and dirt, while the cover hid their plane in a cloud of GPS static.

He was in the front cabin, twirling his last cigar in his fingers and wondering what it would all look like in twenty years. He didn't imagine the sight would improve. Like a sore that had been left open too long, the ground below them had been scarred with weapons fire, bombs and broken buildings. The black out zones were radiated, the rivers contaminated, and even the rain sometimes had fall-out now, but mostly it was the small things. No one grew anything anymore. They'd heard of some hydroponic domes in India, and another in New Zealand, but there weren't any farms. No more cattle ranches, or fields of endless corn. What he wouldn't give for a good old fashioned steak, with mustard and a tall glass of beer. He figured it'd be a long time until anyone was growing barley again. If they ever did.

Honestly, Logan didn't see much left in his future. Eventually Xavier and Magneto would die, either from a Sentinel's arm or old age, and so would Storm. The death camps would empty and all the runaways would be rounded up, and he would live on. Alone. That knowledge frightened him like nothing else did, and he didn't think it would be long now until he was facing that desolate future, they were already too few. He heard Charles muttering that to himself sometimes. “So few of us left,” he'd say.

Logan looked over at the old man, who'd become his friend and compatriot. Xavier was in his chair, staring out the window with that searching look on his face. A replica of the Cerebro machine, which Logan had dubbed Junior, was clipped round the telepath's ears. In the back of the plane he could hear Storm breathing in her sleep, and Magneto shuffling around, unable to lie still and join her in the land of nod. They all had trouble sleeping now, not just Logan.

He checked the sensors again, wincing as he leaned forward and his chest twinged. It was still healing from the Sentinel who found them on a ridge when they'd been forced to land for water. Logan had been speared through the ribs, right before he put his claws into the gaping inferno of it's face. It shorted out the system for a few precious seconds and gave Magneto the time he needed to pull the Sentinel apart piece by piece. It was a small victory, when there were a dozen more like it hurtling toward them and Logan had to be hauled into the plane, bleeding all over the floor and leaving his guts trailing behind them.

He hated dying like that, but he supposed on the scale of deaths he'd still rank that higher then starving every day. He'd once asked Magneto what it felt like to starve, when you couldn't grow back your appetite. Turns out, the human body gave up on pain after awhile and just shut down. That was when it was dying. Logan never actually got that far and his belly would ache and ache, but never collapse.

He fiddled with his cigar, and wondered if, when the Sentinels finally won, his body might shut down like that winter he'd drowned under the ice in Canada. He woke up in spring when he washed ashore. He liked to think that when everyone was dead, he'd be able to sleep through the proverbial ice age and just wake up in a hundred years when shit started growing again. Or two hundred years, however long it took for the planet to recover. Maybe he'd live like the animals in that book Xavier's kids used to beg for. The one with goats or whatever who went underground and ate mushrooms all the time. It'd be better then waking up everyday to a Sentinel leaning over him, ready to stab him through the chest.

“Logan,” Charles Xavier's gravelly voice whispered through the cockpit. “That's not going to happen.” Logan turned and met the telepath's determined eyes as the professor fiercely promised, “we'll find a way to stop this."

“You still got hope, wheels?” Logan asked with tired disbelief.

“I always have hope,” Xavier whispered and looked out the window again, his vision going distant as he returned to searching the world for surviving minds. He didn't leave the plane entirely though. His frail hand lifted and settled over Logan's, softly stroking the knuckles as if Logan was an agitated dog that needed a good pet. Hell, he thought, maybe he was. He'd always had the sneaky suspicion that Charles saw him as feral stray that just needed a big back yard and regular meals. Charles lips twitched, and Logan cocked an eyebrow at him.

“You reading my mind again, professor?” he teased, twirling his cigar in the hand not being held hostage by the professor.

“It's difficult not to,” Xavier smiled at him, and it made him look so much older then seventy when he did that, because somehow reaching for happiness these days made all the other shit more stark and obvious. “And,” Charles continued, with a weary twinkle in his eye. “Truthfully, I find the sound your thoughts comforting.”

“Now there's something you don't hear everyday,” Logan snorted. “You see something in there I don't?” he asked.

They'd never found any memories older than his time in Canada. It was as if he'd been born in that horrific tank fully formed, and chopping through a base of soldier's was his way of pushing through the birth canal. Every once in awhile Charles would pick through his brain again, looking for clues, but it was a mostly pointless and nostalgic exercise. Something left over from their days in New York, when Xavier's home was still standing and you could get a beer and a burger on any old street corner.

“There's only you, my friend, as always.” The professor said, and Logan shook his head with a snort.

It used to bother him that the professor could read his mind. He was a private person, and didn't like that he had no secrets from the likes of this duded up suit in a fancy chair. He tended to snap and snarl whenever he was reminded that Xavier knew everything about him. Or when he'd wake up in the night and hear Xavier in his head, asking if he needed help before Logan had even finished pulling his claws from the wall.

Logan always had the slightly grating instinct the man who knew his secrets wasn't supposed to be Charles Xavier. Sometimes he woke up with a name on the tip of his tongue, but it always faded before he could shout it out. He'd growl at the professor on those days and Charles would politely pretend he didn't hear a word of Logan's internal diatribe. Over time he'd gotten used to the professor, and it felt right working with someone who knew him so well. A buried part of him even found it comforting, in the absence of that other man that Logan could no longer remember.

“I can stop listening, if you prefer Logan,” Xavier said, looking out the windshield. "You know, you only have to ask."

His voice was as mild as ever, and you'd never guess at the preemptive grief hidden in those words, if you couldn't smell it. The professor had offered many times to stop listening in on his every thought, and Logan knew that Xavier hadn't pried into everyone's mind like he did Logan's, back when the school was still standing. Hell, not listening to those students would be a daily discipline in Logan's opinion, and an act of self preservation as much as manners. Who wanted a hundred teenage hormonal dramas running round their head all day? He sure as hell didn't. Logan never figured out why the professor kept such a constant watch on his mind, but whatever the man's reasons, Logan was used to it now, and he didn't begrudge the professor whatever comfort he chose to find in this dying world. Xavier clung to them all. Logan, Storm, and Magneto's minds were like appendages to the professor. When they were hurt, he felt it, and every time Logan died Xavier cried.

“I ain't bothered,” Logan said with shrug and twitch of his nose. “Just don't know why you do it sometimes. There's nothing very hopeful going on up here.” Logan scratched at his temple. If he was a telepath, he wouldn't want to experience death every time a friend was gutted like a fish.

“It's not the dying, Logan,” Xavier replied to his thought. “It's the moment you wake up again. You may not have much hope, my friend, but your survival gives me some, and you always have an interesting perspective on life.”

“Yeah, I'm special that way,” Logan griped, and wished he could light up his cigar and puff a smoke ring in the professor's face. But even if they'd tolerate him smoking in the plane, he wouldn't waste this beauty. If no one was growing tobacco, they sure as hell weren't rolling cigars anymore, and he wanted to keep this relic of the old world for a special occasion. “You getting anything?” he asked, nodding at Cerebro Junior, and the professor shook his head sadly.

“No. Perhaps if we go lower.”

“That's gonna take us out of cover, and awfully close to their sensor fields,” Logan warned, but he was already flipping switches and taking the stick to dive the jet into a lower altitude. “I'll try heading north.”

They flew down and skimmed the edges of a mountain range, somewhere over what used to Germany. Logan kept his eyes peeled for bogies and and blips on the radar, while the professor kept looking for minds on the ground.

“You know, when I was boy, I hated all the noise,” Charles murmured as they flew, and Logan blinked at him. “I could hear my mother planning parties and wishing I'd been born a girl, or that I hadn't been born at all. I could hear the milk-man thinking about beating his dogs, the maids and teachers and the other children, the neighbors and _oh_ , when we went into the city.” Xavier chuckled and shook his head the way old men did when remembering some pain that seemed small and silly, compared to present horrors. “At first it was only a murmur, something I'd hear in the background, but as I got older it became louder and louder.” He looked over at Logan with a secret smile. “It wasn't until I was twelve that I realized all those voices were coming from other people's minds, and not my own.”

“Christ,” Logan swore. “Must've thought you were insane.”

“I did.” Xavier rubbed his frail thumb between Logan's knuckles where they sat on the dashboard. Logan could feel the slightest pressure against his claws, and even with them sheathed under his skin they felt dangerous next to the professor's frail hand. He thought Charles might cut himself on them, even with their skin in the way.

“Ironic isn't it,” Xavier murmured. “I used to pray the world would be quiet, just for one night, and now all my nights are silent and I would give anything to hear those wondrous lives clamoring in my mind again. There's so few of us left.” His voice trailed away as he looked over the black mountains and held onto Logan's hand like it was an anchor. Logan let him. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't very good with words. He supposed that might be another reason the professor liked listening to his mind rather than hearing him talk. Xavier could probably feel the wince of sympathy, and the desolate feeling Logan shared at the slow extinction of humanity. He didn't need to muck it up by saying anything.

Still he was grateful when he caught the shuffling sounds behind him and Magneto's sharp iron scent filled the cabin. He turned and shared a look with the old man, as Magneto came up to his chair and gently removed Xavier's hand from Logan's wrist, wrapping it up in his own hand and entwining their fingers.

“Ah, Erik,” Xavier said with a small smirk. “Have you come to relieve Logan?”

“Well, it's impossible to sleep with the plane rolling around like this. Hasn't your animal learned how to fly yet,” he looked down his nose at Logan, with a taunting light in his eyes.

“Watch it bub.” Logan stood up with a halfhearted growl, chest to chest with Magneto in the cramped cockpit. These were all old arguments. Everything really nasty had been said a long time ago, and their sniping was mostly routine now. Something to get them through the dreadful monotony, and moments of hectic crisis's their lives had become. Besides, living in a thirty five foot cargo hold on a plane didn't leave much room for real fighting. You either got along, or killed each other, and even if Logan could die there were enough mutants dying out there already. Magneto was still an ass though. Logan suspected that was a universal constant and had tried to get Charles to back him up on this with stories of Magneto's youth, but the professor always politely changed the subject with a sneaky look at Mags.

“We're going to try another sector, Erik." The professor said. "I thought I had someone for a moment, but then...”

“How close are the Sentinels?” Magneto interrupted him, focusing on Logan.

“Too close,” Logan reported. “Like always, but I'd give us another hour at this altitude before we gotta run for cover. Might be worth it,” he glanced back at the professor and shared that look again with Magneto. The one that said, 'well, he's still awake and his nose ain't bleeding.' They had an unspoken agreement to tag-team Xavier when he'd spent too long searching for tactical clues in the minds on earth. Logan had been up for forty eight hours now, and he was ready to hand things over and get some shut-eye. He shouldered his way past the old mutant, but paused when the man laid a hand on his arm and his skeleton hummed slightly, like it always did when Magneto wanted his attention.

“We won't be long. Send Storm up for the watch. She at least can pilot a plane without tipping it over.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Logan replied idly and left the cabin. He could hear Magneto and the professor talking in low voices behind him and quickly stomped to the back of the plane, making a concerted effort to ignore them. He didn't want to listen in on whatever lovers scene they were having. No sir. He got enough of that already. Every man and woman had morning needs and living in this plane didn't leave any room for privacy. The last time any of them slept alone was that bunker in Arizona. It was the last of Xavier's bolt holes and had been demolished six years ago, in a Sentinel attack on new years eve.

The four of them had lived like they were on one long damn road trip ever since. Sometimes they'd do a drop, and Logan or Magneto, or Storm would be earth bound for awhile, but mostly they stayed on the move. They paused only to pick up fuel, or take a piss and they had to share everything from food, to farts and beds. Logan could tell you exactly what time of night Magneto would let one off, and that the man should never eat beans. He'd know how tense Storm was by the tapping of her fingers, and he'd heard all the professors favorite stories a hundred times by now. At least he thought he had. You learn to make peace with people in strange ways Logan mused as he stepped over their crates of supplies, and crouched beside Storm's sleeping bag. He shook her, and when she rolled over and gave him a bleary evil eye, he smirked and nodded back at the front cabin.

“Your turn darlin'.”

Storm grunted and rolled to her feet, then went up towards the cabin, wrapping her armored jacket tight around her frame and blowing on cold fingers. She wasn't much of a morning person. Logan busied himself rolling under her abandoned sleeping bag. It was awkward with his armored vest, and he was tempted to take the thing off. It wasn't like it did much good for him anyway, but Charles and Magneto insisted on the things. It was another one of those tag-team efforts, which Logan liked a lot better when he wasn't on the receiving end. So he just laid on his back and used Storm's bag as blanket, sticking a pack of rations under his head as a pillow. They'd taste the same whether they were squashed or not.

He was drifting off with the expertise of a man trained to take sleep where he could get it, when he felt that familiar hum in his bones, and a pair of boots stomped up to his head. A long body joined him on the floor and Logan unzipped the sleeping bag, passing half of it over as the smell of sweat, and iron and old breath filled his nose. He waited for the other smell, slightly mustier and softer one to slip in next to them, but it didn't come, and there was no second body being laid out on the floor.

“I thought you two weren't gonna be long?” Logan said, referring to Xavier's absence without opening his eyes. Magneto shifted beside him, and Logan could feel the man crossing his arms. He always slept with arms folded on his chest like a mummy. Logan found it kind of irritating.

“Well we couldn't fuck ourselves quite as quickly as usual,” Magneto replied snidely, and then added in a more serious tone. “Charles insisted on working, as long as we stayed at this altitude.”

Logan grunted. “You worried about that?” He was never sure with Magneto. The man was a strategist, but sometimes his feelings for the professor made things complicated. Logan guessed playing chess for fifty years had its advantage though, because the professor was just as sharp about tactics as Mags. It was one of the things which made living with them tolerable. He could trust they wouldn't make stupid decisions, or send him off on hopeless quests. However much they all wanted to liberate the camps.

“We need information,” Magneto said. “Charles will stop when he must.”

Yeah, Logan thought. Or Storm will call me up to drag his wrinkly bleeding ass back here when he passes out. Logan would have objected more strongly, and he suspected Magneto would too, but they both knew Xavier wasn't much use in a fight these days. The Sentinels didn't have minds to control, so the professor could run himself ragged at communications, and they weren't much worse off then before. The professor was on the trail of something right now, and while Logan didn't think that it would turn up much, he understood the need to try.

“You really think he's gonna find anything?” Logan asked.

“Yes,” Magneto whispered, and Logan could hear the lie in his voice.

“Yeah, me to,” he replied, and was pretty sure Magneto heard his lie reflected in Logan's rough grumble. A long and awkward silence ensued, as it usually did when he and Magneto had to spend any time alone together. Logan didn't exactly hate the man, mostly because he couldn't afford to anymore, but he liked having the professor as a buffer between them all the same. Sometimes when Magneto looked at him, he wasn't sure if the expression was tolerance, the way you'd look at a lover's pet that had peed all over you shoes, or if it was regret. As if Magneto was annoyed that Charles had picked up Logan before he did. Funny thing was, if he'd met Magneto first, he'd have probably agreed with him on a lot things.

“It's your move, wolverine,” Magneto's voice interrupted Logan's brooding.

“Jesus Christ, bub give it a rest,” Logan growled.

“You currently have your King in check,” Magneto reminded him.

“Hey, you sent me back here in the first place, so shut up and let me get some god-damn sleep. Go play with the professor if you want a match.”

“Gladly, my dear boy, once you have moved,” Magneto replied and Logan could smell self satisfaction rolling off the asshole.

“I don't do chess,” he whined through his teeth like a wounded animal. Magneto's satisfied scent grew stronger.

“You will. If we are to leave the remnants of our entire civilization in your claws, I prefer to die knowing there will be more in your head than drinking, brawling and motorcycle parts. I could of course tutor you on the finer points of Flemish artwork in the sixteenth century, if you prefer.”

Logan groaned. “I'll move the king.”

“Excellent choice. Where?”

“I don't know, out of danger. To the right.”

“King to C1 then,” Magneto supplied in cultured tones that had grown a bit wobbly with age.

“Sure,” Logan replied.

“Interesting move.”

“It'd be a lot more interesting if you'd quit yapping about it,” Logan grumbled, wishing he could stuff a sock in the man's mouth. Maybe he could steal one of Storm's. She was the only one of them who still had extras. “You know it won't do much good, stuffing all that in my head anyway,” he said to the cold metal wall of the plane. “I ain't gonna remember it when I'm living on ash and poisoned water.

“No, I don't suspect you will," Magneto replied in a whisper. "But when that time comes, playing a game of chess with yourself may keep you sane a little while longer.”

Well, what did you say to that? Logan sighed, fingering the cigar in his pocket. He supposed Magneto had plenty of experience keeping himself sane in solitary, and this was how it always was with Mag's and the professor anyway. Xavier would talk about hope, telling Logan that his fears would never come to pass. Magneto would force shit down his throat so that when his fears did happen he'd have something to hold onto in the night. He wasn't sure if that was altruism, or cruelty. Maybe it would be better to live like an animal and never remember what they'd lost. Hell, he half suspected Magneto was only drilling him because the man wouldn't get a tombstone and he wanted to be remembered. But then, they deserved to be remembered. All of them. And even if Mags was only doing it for his ego, it felt good having one person on this plane not telling him it would “be all right.”

“What's your move then?” Logan asked the ceiling, and didn't flinch when he felt Magneto place a hand on his armored belly.

“Knight to E2,” he replied softly.

“Shit,” Logan swore. That was going to bite him in the ass tomorrow, but at least for tonight the torture was over. The weight of magneto's hand and the hum in his bones settled the rest of his restless spirit, and much later, when he was drifting on the edge of sleep, Charles came into the back of the plane. Logan watched Magneto get up through half-closed eyes, and wipe blood off the professor's lip, cleaning the man's nose with the end of his cloak. Then he helped his friend out of his chair, and gently laid him on the blankets beside Logan, stretching out Xavier's legs with infinite care.

“Erik,” Xavier whispered, as their armor clinked together. Magneto paused, and Xavier reached up, brushing his fingers against Magneto's wrinkled old chin, and giving the man a watery smile. “I found something.”

~

A few weeks later, they stepped into the courtyard of a ruined temple on Hua shan, on the eastern end of the Qin mountains, and Logan lit up his last cigar.  
   


End file.
